Jos Truitt’s “The Dangers of a Gender Essentialist Approach to Sexual Violence” in combination with Randi Nixon’s comment during class regarding a “trickle up effect” created the space for me to think about how feminism can better support all survivors of sexual assault. After all, we know sexual assault is not limited to the narrow confinement of white gender binaries. Second wave feminists approached sexual assault from a “women as victims and men as perpetrators” point of view, and I am afraid this approach has not evolved since. This perspective of sexual assault does a sort of violence not only to cis-men and cis-women, but to non-binary non-gender conforming people through the erasure of their identity in sexual assault discourse.
In the article Truitt claims that “we need to be able to hold an understanding of rape as a genderless act at the same time that we recognize it as embedded in a gendered culture of violence.” This speaks to the, what I believe we can call, an outdated approach to sexual assault. There is a fine line between recognizing sexual assault as a battle between the sexes and recognizing sexual assault as a type of violence intended to secure gender roles and binaries, and I believe this distinction is difficult to make without understanding the realities of sexual assault among all genders.
Recognizing sexual assault as the formerly mentioned leads me to Nixon’s mention of a “trickle up effect” when working with sexual assault survivors. If the experiences of non-conforming gender identities are taken seriously and sexual assault survivorship is written in the narrative of non-conforming gender identity, everyone else who is a survivor of sexual assault would be welcome in that narrative. So far, all these thoughts are only applicable to white people. I think it is a safe assumption that the narratives of coloured cis-women sexual assault survivors are very different from the narratives of their white counter parts. This difference in survivorship narrative needs to be taken up as well, although I am not sure this “trickle up effect” would prove effective when dealing with this intersection. Since coloured cis-folks are deemed rapable and white folks are not, I wonder if these narratives of sexual assault need to be reinvented in order for a a “trickle up effect” to be effective.
I appreciate what you have to say about the intersection of gender and race with regards to sexual assault. An individual's identity (in all of its forms) immensely impacts their experience of sexual assault, as well as what the journey their life takes afterward might look like. I especially appreciate your assertion that "there is a fine line between recognizing sexual assault as a battle between the sexes and recognizing sexual assault as a type of violence intended to secure gender roles and binaries, and I believe this distinction is difficult to make without understanding the realities of sexual assault among all genders". These realities, of course, are that sexual assault happens to every 'type' of person and that these narratives are unique and important. Without recognizing these narratives, a complete conceptualization of sexual assault is impossible.
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